UN Conference on Human Settlements

C'est moi

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I recommend this article on cities, because design alone will not save us.

This blog is, and always has been, ad-free. No sponsored/external content, and no, I don't want you to help me "monetize" it or improve my SEO. No solicitation emails please. Thanks for your attention to this matter.

This blog is a long, somewhat messy photo essay on the history and politics of design. Design's socio-historical context—that is, the constraints and influences on the way we make objects, dwellings and cities—seems too often ignored. We no longer know where our styles, tastes or objects really come from, and this damages our creativity and sense of meaning. Historical knowledge is so fugitive in the New World, with everything so decontextualized in the rapid flow of commodities and images. Don't even get me started on tumblr and pinterest. As Fran Lebowitz said, "Designers now, they all have these things called mood boards. I suppose they think a sense of discovery equals invention. It would be as if every writer had a board with paragraphs of other writers—'Oh, I'll take a little bit of this, and that, he was really good.' Yes, he was really good! And that is not a mood board, it is a stealing board." As for the sort of design I'm personally interested in, full disclaimer.....read more ____________________________________

To read about my book project on Vancouver's UN-Habitat Forum event of 1976 concerning just and sustainable urban settlements, click here. Few know that Buckminster Fuller, Margaret Mead, Mother Teresa, Paolo Soleri and Maggie & Pierre Trudeau, along with many thousands of others, came to Vancouver in 1976 to talk about better, safer, fairer and greener cities worldwide. In fact it was the founding conference of UN Habitat, an agency built around a foundational document called The Vancouver Declaration. My book is about what happened that year and is a snapshot not just of Vancouver but of how people around the world began to view cities and themselves differently in the wake of, among other things, the first oil crisis. ____________________________________

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Settler & pioneer “heritage hipster” styles in the age of Idle No More, Chinatown gentrification, &c.

The Hitler Youth haircut

So you think you'd like to live in a church.

Eileen Gray's e-1027 house

How rooms and architecture affect creativity

The Cowichan sweater of Vancouver Island

"Contempo," my least favourite design style

James Wines and SITE – art, architecture & enlightened business
and
Still-unsurpassed box store architecture: SITE

Aalto’s Villa Mairea in Finland

Whatever happened to the seating platform, the conversation pit?

Werner Herzog on advertising

Everyone loves an indoor swing.

Dave Eggers and his Pirate Supply Store/Tutoring Centre

The ladies of 20th century furniture design were offered to pose on fur rugs or ponies.

I am a jackeroo in the ebay.

I have no clue why they dance so madly.

Donald Judd's loft.

Terunobu Fujimori

Handmade Houses in Christiania

You Know Things Are Messed Up When Librarians Start Marching

Occupy Vancouver

The Holly Hobbie Retrenchment.